The Study of the Application of a Keywords-based Chatbot System on the Teaching of Foreign Languages

TL;DR

This study evaluates a keywords-based chatbot's effectiveness in foreign language teaching, finding it inadequate due to irrelevant responses and limited understanding, thus limiting its usefulness as a teaching assistant.

Contribution

It provides an empirical analysis of a keywords-based chatbot's limitations in supporting foreign language learning.

Findings

Chatbot responses are mostly short, repeated, and irrelevant.

The system cannot understand language context effectively.

It is unsuitable as a teaching assistant in language education.

Abstract

This paper reports the findings of a study conducted on the application of an on-line human-computer dialog system with natural language (chatbot) on the teaching of foreign languages. A keywords-based human-computer dialog system makes it possible that the user could chat with the computer using a natural language, i.e. in English or in German to some extent. So an experiment has been made using this system online to work as a chat partner with the users learning the foreign languages. Dialogs between the users and the chatbot are collected. Findings indicate that the dialogs between the human and the computer are mostly very short because the user finds the responses from the computer are mostly repeated and irrelevant with the topics and context and the program does not understand the language at all. With analysis of the keywords or pattern-matching mechanism used in this chatbot it can be concluded that this kind of system can not work as a teaching assistant program in foreign language learning.